What a relief! 2008 is buried and I hope its ghost will not haunt us (too) much.
My birthday was great. During the day I had my yearly “retreat”, bringing the much needed relaxation and meditation. Could hardly have been better.
In the evening the family went to Morel’s Restaurant (liang ma qiao lu), a very obvious and wise choice. Renaat Morel took good care of us, Sun and Valerie immediately opted for the “Belgian mussels” (imported from Japan – actually better than the Dutch one), I took the “small” special menu, emptied a bottle of champagne and we all went home STUFFED as Thanksgiving turkeys.

After watching HBO Spiderman Nr. ? (forgot, too much excitement), for the countdown to 24:00 we switched to the hilarious New Year’s Eve show on CCTV9, hilarious because of its silliness. The public seemed to be on a heavy dose of Valium. How can people wave like a slow-motion metronome with expressionless faces, listening to a great live performance of “Volare, Cantare”? It wasn’t better with the Chinese performers (the “Tibet” songs were probably done by fake Tibetans from Anhui), the audience seemed like counting the seconds they could go home.
In Beijing, you just invent fun. I had my last (?) cigar, emptied another Scotch bottle and we all went happy to bed.
Happy 2009!